OK, OK, I get it, BlogFans. You want another blog. What's the cause for the delay, after I promised more frequent blogs? Well I'll tell you. If I had written five days ago, it would have been the most depressing pity party of a blog I would ever have written. There was some misery, my friends. I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me, given that I'm back in Paradise, but things were bleak there for a while.
So we met up with Blair and Ange in Bangkok a few days ago, and helped them through jetlag and culture shock by wasting days trying to find stuff to do and getting driven around and screwed over by tuk tuk drivers who ultimately got us nowhere. Thankfully, we met an awesome, wonderful, kind-of crazy waiter who was about one snip away from becoming a LadyBoy who steered us back in the right direction....just not in time to see anything before it all closed. Frustrating, frustrating city!!! So we went on a tour our last day in bangkok, or rather near Bangkok because I was starting to get hostile. The tour involved going to the famous Floating Market (made famous on America's Next Top Model Cycle 7), which honestly was a massive disappointment. I thought it was a legit market that locals frequent, but it was just another tourist trap peddling the same old junk, only at this market you're trapped in a boat driven by someone else, so you can't walk away when you're not interested and are subjected to their harassment against your will. I was at the back of our boat, and even our boat driver kept harassing me to buy bracelets from her, and I obviously couldn't escape. So I didn't buy anything or even look at anything just on principle, and the end of our little tour, for which we'd already spent the equivalent of $5 each (yes, a small sum of money, but a lot over here!! Our pettiness over small sums of money over here makes me feel kind of guilty...) our boat driver rowed us into the centre of a dirty canal and demanded that we tip her. Obviously, we were in a bit of a vulnerable situation, and she clearly knew it. We had Ange and her very effective 'tude with us though, and she got us back to shore without our having to produce our wallets. All in all: not cool.
Stop two was the Tiger Temple, which I liked a lot but also felt a bit uneasy about. The story is supposed to be that monks saved orphaned tigers and then took on more and more tigers until tigers were being born and raised at this place. We were told that the tigers were drugged to make them docile, which the organization claims is not true, and I am inclined to believe them. I've read about how "vicious" animals raised by humans lose their basic reasons for being aggressive, and it wasn't like you were just allowed to go in and hop on a tiger's back. You had to be careful and not wear anything dangly, etc. But the tigers were just laying there, most of them drowsy, and you got herded around by volunteers who took your picture with each tiger. It was just a bit photo op. The tiger cubs were better because you could approach them without being pressured to move on, etc. I'm glad I got to see the tigers--especially the cubs--up close and personal, but there was something a little sad about it all. Next we went to see the famous Bridge Over the River Kwai, which was cool to see but does not make for very interesting blogging. After Laos, the massive tourism of Thailand is turning me off a little. Not that I'm not loving Thailand.
That night, Blair and Ange and I boarded a bus and got the heck out of Bangkok while Kaje stayed alone for aday cause she wanted to meet Andrew at the airport. So Blair and Ange and I took an overnighter and a ferry to Koh Tao, an island in the Southern Gulf of Thailand. Exotic and tropical, yes? NO. The island is beautiful but looked nothing like the photos because it poured rain the entire two days that we wre there. And when I say poured I mean POURED, like you go out for a second and you're drenched. The kinds of showers that we've seen already but last only for twenty minutes to an hour. These showers lasted for two solid days and let up only on the second night for a short while. Naturally, there's not a lot to report about Koh Tao, except that I went out sans Blair and Ange the second night and had a blast dancing at a beach bar with a bunch of guys from Australia, Canada, Israel, Denmark, and Sweden, and ended up administering impromptu First Aid to drinking injuries at 4:00am. It's strange, because I have all this fun with people and I have barely been exchanging information with anyone. It just seems silly to become Facebook friends with them all when you've spent one night hanging out, but then it almost seems unreal.
With no sunshine in sight, we left beautiful Koh Tao for beautiful Koh Phangnan, home of the famous Full Moon Party, and got more of the same. Kaje and Andrew joined us there, and we sat in misery in more torrential downpour, even worse than on Koh Tao. We stayed in some bungalows down the beach from Coral Bungalows, where there's a great set up, so we would go there for meals and to hang out. There were times though that it would be raining so hard that I had to wear my bathing suit and make a run for it, carrying my clothes in a ziploc bag and losing another pair of flip flops (third this trip) in the process. It was a little exhilerating for about three hours, and then it got to the point that it seemed the only point of getting out of bed was to eat and watch movies at Coral. Our second day there, I watched five movies. I also shared a bungalow with a 6'9'', 20-year-old boy from Hawaii who we met getting off the ferry and who seemed normal enough but who tried more than once to crawl in my bed with me despite my very clear signals (like telling him I was not in the least interested in him--he asked) that he shouldn't. Anyway, all of this together made me very supportive of the group decision to jump ship on the Full Moon Party. I don't care if it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We were five of the very few people actually leaving the island, but we were rewarded when we came here, to Railay, in the Andaman Sea. It is not an island but an isthmus (??) and is absolutely gorgeous. And although we have a bit of daily rain, we have seen sunshine for the first time in over a week. And I have a sunburn to prove it. Apparently, Angela, you DO need to rub in spray-on sunscreen. Haha. We've been spending our time here celebrating Ange's 25th birthday, which was meant to be spent at the Full Moon Party, but which we've been celebrating in the sun instead. The first night we got here, we had a lovely but very expensive dinner and then went to a Thai boxing match in the middle of the jungle. It was kind of cool, but having worked for a head injury specialist, I really think that boxing is among the stupidest endeavours a human being can partake in...but that's just me. Last night was Ange's actual birthday, which we spent on the beach and then Kaje and I gave her birthday present--corn row braids, Bo Derek style!!!! She was thrilled, and has been shakin' her beads and singing Bob Marley and getting our money's worth. We had another superb meal and drinks with a couple of couples that we met here and then I FIREDANCED!!! I'm not even going to try to describe it to you because there's video that says it all. Except to say that it was probably not a good idea after 3 litres of Beer Chang. But I got by without serious injury and only made a little bit of an ass of myself.
Today, the couples went kayaking and I went to the beach. It is gorgeous here. GORGEOUS!! There's huge limestone cliffs and towers sticking out of the water. Today I was laying under a tree (nursing my sunburn) when all of a sudden the tree above me was FILLED with monkeys. There were probably two to three dozen of them, including a mother with a brand new baby clinging to its belly. They weren't skiddish at all and we could approach them and feed them bananas (what else??). SOOO cool! I got a little too close to the mama/baby though, taking a picture, and the big guy (I'm guessing the Alpha Male of the group, fromthe way he was acting...) came racing towards me and took a swipe at me. It terrified me a lot. Seriously, though, very unexpected and cool (but HOT!!!) day at the beach.
George, Andrew's cousin, is supposed to arrive tonight, and not a moment too soon. Although it's fun travelling with a group (and staying five of us in one big communal bed meant for four) and although doing so gives me extra independence to take off on my own sometimes, which I do enjoy doing, I am beginning to feel like I'm tagging along on the world's longest double date. Not that we're not enjoying ourselves, cause we really, really are. After the monsoon, any time that we're dry is a good time.
I feel as though I'm missing heaps, but it's been too long and I'm doing this freestyle, sans notes.
Hope everyone is well!!! Miss y'all!!!
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